790 
‘T'HED RURAb NEW-YORKER 
Juue (, 
germ-;. The commercial starter should not he al¬ 
lowed to get over-ripe, as the germs are most numer¬ 
ous and most active in the starter about the time it 
curdles. Everything that comes in contact with it 
must he sterilized before using. A small package, 
costing 75 cents, is large enough to inoculate two 
quarts of sterilized milk. After the first inocula¬ 
tion with lactic ferment, a small quantity of the 
commercial starter is saved to inoculate the next 
two quarts or more. If great care and clean¬ 
liness is observed it is only necessary to buy lactic 
ferment for a few inoculations. I have used a good 
clean buttermilk and sour skim-milk with very near 
as good results (of course they should not be steri¬ 
lized, as it would kill the lactic acid bacteria), but 
prefer commercial starter, as it contains a higher 
percentage of lactic acid and is a cleaner sour. 
USING THE SOUR MILK.—The method I used 
was as follows: As soon as the baby chicks are dry 
in the incubator, about 24 hours earlier than I 
would otherwise move them to the brooder, I take 
them out and give each chick a pen dropper full of 
commercial starter down its throat. By taking the 
chicks out as soon as they are dry, and by keeping 
the light excluded from the incubator compartment 
during hatching (I use a dark curtain for this), 
the chicks have very little chance to eat any drop¬ 
pings or pieces of eggshell, and to a certain extent 
the spread of the infection is prevented. As soon 
as I started to use the commercial starter the high 
mortality stopped, and we were able to raise 60 to 
70 per cent of chicks hatched. To give the medi¬ 
cine and commercial starter a fair test I took 
alternating incubator compartments of chicks, giv¬ 
ing to one the medicine, the second, commercial 
starter, and the third, nothing. In each test the 
mortality was very high in chicks that were given 
nothing. In one case 100 per cent, or all, died. 
The chicks receiving medicine did a very little bet¬ 
ter than those that were given nothing. Of the 
chicks given commercial starter, I was able to raise 
60 to 70 per cent. In September, 1913, we put 
1,650 strong, vigorous pullets in the laying houses 
and sold over 200. 
METHOD OF FEEDING.—A few hours after the 
baby chicks are in the brooder they are given fresh 
water with permanganate of potassium in it, and 
this is always before them. As soon as they learn 
to drink well, sour skimmed milk is always before 
them in open pans. This is not given for about 
two days, as the chicks wallow in it badly and then 
get chilled. No food is given for 36 hours after 
they are in the brooder. First two days: Pin-head 
oatmeal mixed with 15 per cent, fine sifted meat 
scrap, grit, shell and charcoal, is fed five times a 
day in low pans, and it is left before the chicks 
about 10 minutes at each feeding. For the next 
two days to two weeks fine grains are fed in the 
litter three times a day. dry mash twice a day in 
low troughs with screens over them. These are left 
before chicks 15 minutes in the morning. 30 minutes 
in the afternoon. Two to four weeks, grain the 
same as above, dry mash before chicks 30 minutes 
in the morning and all afternoon. As the commer¬ 
cial starter and sour skim-milk seemed to overcome 
the disease, we decided to breed our 1914 pullets 
from our own stock without any blood agglutination 
test or bringing in new blood. The stock here had 
been selected for over eight years. 
SELECTED STOCK.—This year we have 750 
yearling breeders, the pick of last year’s laying 
stock. They will average over four pounds each 
and are all S. C. White Leghorns. For March their 
egg production was over 48 per cent; for April 62 
per cent; for this month to date it is over 60 per 
cent. We mated these yearlings with our own 
cockerels. The cockerels were put with the hens 
when they were taken off the range in October. 
1913. All breeding stock had sour skim-milk to 
drink once a day for the months of January and 
February. The milk was given in low pans. This 
year every chick that is hatched is given a i>en 
dropper full of commercial starter down its throat 
as soon as it is dry, and has sour skim-milk always 
before it as soon as it learns to drink without wal¬ 
lowing in it. The feeding, care, etc., are the same 
as given during 1913. 
IMPROVED CONDITIONS.—Our first hatch this 
year came off February 22. To date. May 6th, we 
have hatched 4,552 chicks, and the total loss has 
been 420 chicks, or 9 per cent. There has been no 
sign of white diarrhoea in any of the chicks that 
died or are living. All the chicks have grown fast 
and are strong. Some of the cockerels weighed 
iy» pounds at seven weeks, and were crowing. Of 
course for years sour skim-milk has been fed by 
many others to baby chicks as soon as they would 
drink it, but to check or prevent bacillary white 
diarrhoea I believe it is essential that it be given 
at the very earliest possible moment after the 
chicks are hatched. That is as soon as it is safe 
to remove them from the incubator, so that the lac¬ 
tic acid may prevent or destroy the germs as soon 
as possible. My method of giving so large a dose 
and so early in the life of the chick, is to fill as 
far as possible the intestinal tract with lactic acid. 
I believe that the one dose given at this time does 
more good as a preventive and cure than all the 
sour skimmed milk or other treatment given after¬ 
ward. I think this is emphasized by the seriousness 
of the outbreak and high mortality last year before 
I used this method; and the very low mortality 
this year and last year after using it. 
New York. edward s. parsons. 
WHAT WOULD YOU DO? 
A Chicken Man’s Honor. 
SHOULD very much like to have the readers of 
The II. N.-Y. express their opinions as to what 
is the right, just and fair thing to do when 
one has sent eggs for hatching to an unknown party 
several hundred miles away, who reports that “none 
of the eggs hatched : they were all infertile.” Sup¬ 
pose that in your own yard eggs from the same 
pen have tested—after a week’s incubation under 
hens—only two clear eggs out of 43 under the hens, 
and on the eighteenth day, after taking out the 
eggs with dead germs, and some eggs had been 
broken in the nests; there were left 34 eggs with 
well-developed chicks in, that give every indication 
of hatching. Such being your experience in your 
own yard, it becomes very difficult to believe that 
the dozen sent away were “all infertile.” But no 
matter what you think, the question is. what ought 
you to do? Should you take the buyer’s word with¬ 
out question and send him a duplicate of his order 
without charge, or offer him another lot at half 
price? 
I should like to have a consensus of opinion from 
both the buyer’s and the seller's point of view, as to 
what really is the honest, just thing to do, and fair 
to both parties under such circumstances. The 
seller has used every possible care to have these 
eggs fertile, has turned them every other day, has 
packed them so that when received none is cracked 
or broken, has carefully kept them in a temperature 
from 50 to 60 degrees, and delivered them in good 
condition to the express company. Hasn't he done 
all that his part of the contract calls for? After 
they have passed out of his control, ought he still 
to be responsible? Or, is it right that his responsi¬ 
bility should continue until the eggs are actually 
in the possession of the buyer? Should his respons¬ 
ibility end when the eggs reach the buyer? Or 
must he continue to take all the risks until the 
chicks are actually hatched out? From the buyer's 
point of view he has paid out his good money to 
get. not eggs but some chicks; but the getting of 
chicks may be frustrated in many ways. It is only 
fair to the seller that his eggs should be tested 
after a week's incubation and the result at once 
reported to him; that is, considering his responsi¬ 
bility does not end until after a week’s incubation. 
If no such report is made, and at the end of the 
hatch he is told that “the eggs did not hatch; all 
were infertile,” is he then in honor bound to re¬ 
place the eggs without charge? I would like the 
opinion of R. N.-Y. readers on this question. 
GEO. A. COSGROVE. 
SHORT COVER CROPPING; GRASS SEEDING 
W ILL it pay to sow some cover crop in corn at 
the last cultivation of corn, when same 
would have to be plowed up as soon as the 
weather permits after the first of June to get the 
land ready for oats? The land that I cultivate is 
comparatively level. On account of handling a fruit 
crop, it is impossible for me to do any Fall seeding. 
I am some distance from the railroad and it takes 
all of my motive power to deliver the apples to the 
station. I note that you advise against the seeding 
of grass with oats. I would much prefer to seed 
the grass in the Fall, but for reasons stated above 
it is impossible for me to seed grass except in the 
Spring. I have obtained remarkable results from 
seeding about 1*4 bushels of oats with one gallon 
of Timothy and one gallon of clover per acre, using 
400 pounds of basic slag per acre. The oats make 
fryln 15 to 25 bushels per acre, governed largely by 
the season. f. d. w. 
Virginia. 
R. N.-Y.—Yes, we would sow a cover crop even 
though it had only 60 days to grow. Even in that 
time rye or turnips or Crimson clover will more 
than pay for the labor and seed. The cover crop 
serves a double purpose. It occupies the ground 
during Fall and Winter, which is the season when 
most of the valuable nitrates are lost from the soil. 
We have often told how these nitrates are formed 
most rapidly during late Summer and early Fall. 
When the soil is occupied by vigorous young crops 
most of these valuable nitrates are saved, but when 
the soil is left bare there is great loss from leaching. 
Thus the cover crops come in at just the right time 
to save this loss, for in the South, particularly, 
there is great loss from the open, unfrozen soil. 
By all means sow cover crops. The R. N.-Y. does 
not lay down any cast-iron rules about farming. 
With us and under our own conditions Fall seeding 
to grass gives best results. We can readily see that 
a combination of other conditions might make seed¬ 
ing with oats more economical. In that case we 
should certainly follow the plan. It is evidence of 
good and intelligent farming when men break away, 
if need be, from standard rules and use their brains 
to think out the best modification to suit their needs. 
We have had evidence of this in studying this 
“Clark method” of seeding to grass. Many farmers 
found themselves utterly unable to carry out all the 
details of this system, yet by modifying it some¬ 
what they obtained far better grass than ever be¬ 
fore. 
RAW PHOSPHATE OR ACID PHOSPHATE. 
C ONCERNING the discussion in recent issues of 
The R. N.-Y., respecting the treatment of ma¬ 
nure with gypsum, floats and acid phosphate, 
permit me to call attention to the experiments at the 
Ohio Experiment Station, which have now been in 
progress for 17 years, and the latest summary of 
which is published in Circular No. 144. Taking the 
summary for the entire period, as given in Table 
XIX, it will be seen that the net gain from the use of 
floats has been so much greater than that from gyp¬ 
sum that it would hare hern cheaper to use floats 
at more Ilian double the price actually paid for it 
than to use gypsum had it cost nothing. 
As between floats and acid phosphate, the table 
shows nearly the same relative differences in ef¬ 
fect. That is, it would have been cheaper to use 
acid phosphate at a 50-per cent greater cost than to 
have used floats as a gift. The only effect that can 
be certainly ascribed to gypsum is the arrest of 
ammonia, and acid phosphate is more effective than 
gypsum in this respect (instead of liberating am¬ 
monia, as one of your correspondents states) and 
it is also the most effective carrier of phosphorus 
in use as a fertilizer. 
But this table does not tell the whole story: Re¬ 
ferring to Table XVIII, it will be seen that, where¬ 
as all the manures have produced greater increase 
in yield during the later years of the test than dur¬ 
ing the first nine years, the manures re-enforced 
with acid phosphate are the only ones which have 
caused a greater rate of increase than that pro¬ 
duced by the untreated manures. This is exactly 
contrary to what was expected when the experiment 
was planned. The floats, or raw phosphate, carries 
approximately twice as much phosphorus as the 
acid phosphate, and it was expected that this would 
gradually become available in the soil and that in 
consequence the rate of gain from the flonts-treated 
manure would show greater increase than that from 
the manure treated with acid phosphate. 
While the floats has not been as effective a car¬ 
rier of phosphorus as acid phosphate, (here can be 
no doubt that it is giving up some phosphorus to the 
crop. In the average, the 320 pounds of floats used 
in the manure has added .$8.36 per acre to the value 
of the crop, whereas in another experiment in 
which the same quantity of floats has been used 
alone in a rotation of corn, oats and clover for nine 
years, it has produced but .$2.60 in value of increase. 
In considering these results it must be borne in 
mind that the experiments have been made on a 
soil hungry for both phosphorus and nitrogen, and 
this nitrogen is probably one reason for the superior 
effectiveness of the acid phosphate. 
Ohio Exp. Station. chas. e. tiiorne. 
Most reports tell of a shrinkage in weight of grain 
in storage. In Utah, a very dry country, wheat gained 
from two to four per cent, in weight. The grain 
weighed less at thrashing time than at any other. 
The Egyptian onion crop is only about half that of 
last year, yet the demand for this shortened product is 
good and prices are excellent. A large share of this 
crop is shipped to America through Liverpool, England. 
Here seems to be a case where one blade of grass 
brought the farmers more than two blades. 
All sorts of expositions are being held. A new one 
will open next April in Milan, Italy. This will he an 
exposition of stone. It will show the development of 
marble, granite and stone working. There are many 
of us who could supply several miles of stone wall of 
very high quality to such an exposition. 
